Monday, 3 June 2013

Be fast to grab your very last chance!

As
we all know, dear readers, there is nothing puritans, moralists, prudes and
bigots like better than to tamper with the national language, to prescribe and
proscribe, to prohibit and command what words may be used, which of the many
possible arbitrary spellings is the only correct one, and how long our
sentences may be. It compares a little bit with the charming doings of the
Spanish Inquisition in the matter of religious dogma, with this difference that
most people balk at the burning of books, while a goodly little Auto-da-Fé was always highly popular
with the pepperbelly plebs of yesteryear (these days the poor things have to
make do with bull fights).

Am I suggesting that such crude fooling around with what ought to be left alone is
a typical Latin transgression, one of
the habitual sins that turn perfectly viable lands and cultures into the enslaved
food stamp countries of today? No, dear reader, not at all! On the contrary!
The ‘tampering disease’ is equally at home in Germanic lands, on Northern
shores, in the linguistic areas where they write nouns with needless capital
letters, toss dots onto and slashes through and funny little circles (º) on top
of innocent vowels, and generally make grating gurgling sounds as they recite the
best poetry their national pride has brought forth.

Which
brings me (AT LAST I hear you sigh…)
to the burning topic of today. So prick up your ears, listen well and pay attention.
If you are versed in High German and were thinking of using any time soon the
equally elegant as useful word

Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz

then you really gotta be fast! Grab your chance today, and write it,
as often as you like or need, as soon as possible. You absolutely have to
hurry, because the provincial parliament of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern has just yesterday
decided to abolish this marvellous term. Why
the provincial parliament of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern possesses the authority to
decide so, I do not know and cannot imagine. But I do know why they have
decided to whitewash it out of the German Dictionary: because – amazingly – it
is not used often enough.

I must say I do not find this argument quite convincing. After all: the
Great Pyramid of Giza is also rarely used for its true purpose. What am I
saying? As far as we know it was only used ONCE (!!!) in the last 4,600 years…
Yet is that a reason to demolish the thing and sell the debris down the river? QED,
I dare say!

But I guess it cannot be helped. Therefore, dear reader, be smart and be
fast about it. For very soon, you will not be allowed no more to use this
veritable pearl among the lexicographer’s art, and you will have to make do
with the poor, pithy, short and succinct next-best-thing, to wit:

Kraftfahrzeug-Haftpflichtversicherung

Of a mere 38 characters.

The world will be a poorer, poorer place…

PS For some more thoughts upon the subject, and amusing stories
concerning the words Défaitisme, Camping, and neologisms in general, see
my older post of May 4th last year by clicking here.

It just so happens I spell that word 'Youmour' (there's a delightful wink in there at Love the French Way...). For all the rest, as long as 270 million of our American cousins SAY 'gotta', I think we ought to oblige them and WRITE 'gotta'. And as for the double negative: I don't see no problem with it...

I haven't got the slightest what the two German words mean. I don't think anybody knows, for that matter. Which is no reason not to use them. The same goes, after all, for the works of Emmanuel Kant and Friedrich Hegel. Not to mention Pooh Bear...